Our first proper butterfly trip this year, to Magdalen Hill Down. Or, to be more precise, two visits within a week, so I'll simply combine those two in one blog post.
In terms of flowering plants, not that many species out yet. But one species flowered in abundance: millions of cowslips! Seems perfect for a thriving colony of Duke of Burgundy butterflies ....
On the first of the two visits, we failed to see the one species we really wanted to see: green hairstreak. But on the second visit, when we focused our attention to the south-facing slope, we did see a few, one of which was happy to pose for pictures!
